Tonight.
Ukraine's deputy defense minister
warning the main
strike of the counteroffensive is, quote,
still ahead.
That message just hours after
Ukraine said
Russia is suffering maximum losses.
Their words on the battlefield.
It comes as Roman truck
smashed a Ukrainian sniper
that we've interviewed
several times here out front
sharing new video
with us of Ukrainian forces
rushing a soldier to safety
after he was wounded
while liberating territory as the line
doctors might have applied.
Well,
this is how an evacuation goes down.
We don't know what the crook wave
your hand.
I can't. It's broken.
Okay.
I'll wave instead.
So it's broken. Is it?
Are you wave again after recovery here.
Our fellow was torn apart
by an explosion.
One of ours?
Yes. That's all that's left of him
in my eyes.
Get him in there.
Get him in. Higher.
Watch his head.
I'm getting out.
I'm getting out now.
The 300 is in the armored vehicle.
Get out! Get out now!
They'll take care of him.
Okay, guys, let's skedaddle.
In the middle of a field, a video just
showing up close. Right.
That's Roman's video of what happened.
What it's like right now
in that moment
on the front lines of a war
that's been going on for 16 months.
Fred Pleitgen is OUTFRONT
tonight in Ukraine with more
Ukrainian SU.
25 attack aircraft
given the goal to assault
Russian positions
against all the odds.
Ukraine's air
force is still very much in the fight.
Pilot Alexi tells me,
are you helping the ground forces now?
A lot in the south
with the counteroffensive operation here
The missions
extremely dangerous,
especially for frontline attack aircraft.
Ukraine's air
is trying to keep Russian air
defenses off balance.
We lost
many young pilots from our brigade.
This taught us to change something.
And today, by day, we try to fly.
Not the same as yesterday.
While Kiev says
its counteroffensive is progressing,
the battles are tough
and gains are hard to come by it.
The biggest threat, Ukraine says
Russian air power.
This video
purporting to show a Russian combat
helicopter taking out a Ukrainian vehicle
The Ukrainian
say Russian interceptor
aircraft like the advanced SUV.
35 often
stop their old MiG 29 jets
from operating near the front lines.
This MiG 29 pilot
who asked us to hide his face
and use only his callsign jus tells me
you can be like a maverick.
But to this,
without the proper
hardware, you can't win.
Here they go.
I got this one.
The Ukrainians say
they need F-16s from the U.S.
and its allies to level
the playing field
and to fully utilize
the air launched missiles the U.S.
has already given them
in between the taxing wartime missions,
pilots are already learning
the basics of the F-16,
hoping
they'll be able to fly them
in the future.
We are trying to improve
our English skills.
We are flying simulators.
So at the moment we have like improvised
simulators of F-16 almost all the bases
the pilots say.
For them,
it's a matter of life and death.
The attrition rate among combat aviators
extremely high.
Both Alexi
Squadron Leader
and his wingman killed in combat,
he says.
When you see the explosion
of your colleague
your eyes in real time, oh,
it's a it's a shock to
it.
It's a shocking picture
and is a really big, um,
difficult in this situation.
It's
how to
how to sit in an aircraft again.
Again, and again and again.
But when
the call comes,
they say they will be ready
and back in the seat,
taking the fight to the Russians
so they can see air and the huge price
that Ukrainian pilots
like so many,
quite frankly, in the Ukrainian
armed forces are currently paying.
And yet despite those huge losses,
among Ukrainian aviators,
they say that they are highly motivated,
especially right now, that
that counteroffensive is rolling.
They understand, of course, as well
that it's going to be
a very tough battle.
It already is.
But they do believe
that it can be successful.
At the same time,
those pilots
saying again and again and again
they hope in the future
they'll get their hands
on those F-16s Erin.
All right, Fred, thank you very much.
Alive tonight in Kiev.
And in Russia,
the so-called extremism
case against top Putin.
Critic Alexei
Navalny continued today
behind closed doors.
The trial could mean decades more.
It added behind bars
for the already imprisoned
opposition leader.
Journalists and even Navalny's
own parents
have been banned
from attending the hearing.
What you're seeing here is a video feed.
It was briefly available yesterday.
Briefly.
Then they took it down,
took it down to no one.
Good, though, not even his family.
And here's what Alexis Navalny's father
had to say to Russia.
Yesterday, you saw
no shame, no conscience, no honor.
And OUTFRONT with me now, Alexei
Navalny his daughter, Dasha.
And Asha, I really appreciate your time.
I'm glad to see you again.
I'm sorry.
It's under these circumstances.
You know,
your father having another trial and
they could add more prison time.
The state owned news
agency in Russia says
they closed the hearing to the public
because of fears of provocations
against the participants in the process.
What does that even mean to you?
I think.
Thank you so much for having me first.
And I think it's a bit ironic that
they close it
out of the fears of prosecution,
considering the fact
that normal Russian citizens
are being prosecuted
by the Russian government
for simply not agreeing with them.
And the judge and the prosecutor
who are
doing illegal things,
putting a man in prison
who has done nothing wrong
or nothing illegal
or afraid of prosecution.
I mean, it's amazing what's happening
where we saw the feed at first.
And I know it's hard to even see that.
I mean, you know, it's grainy, right?
But it's your dad and and he's gone,
you know,
labor camp and and solitary confinement.
And his press secretary
says his eyesight is worsening
now due to the lighting. Right.
The bright light that they subject him to
in his prison cell
because the guards refused to
turn them off even at night.
I know he's been experiencing back pain
even from what you know. Right.
His health has been deteriorating.
They're doing that on purpose.
It appears
How worried are you about
his medical issues right now?
I'm, of course, incredibly worried.
They are not providing any support,
any medical help for him in prison.
And before, you know,
we know that
he's been poisoned by Novichok
and that he has had
acid thrown in his eyes and his face
and they constantly wake him up
during the night
to physically torture him,
to psychologically torture him.
And I want
him to get medical access immediately.
Your father amidst all of this, right.
So he's got this other trial going on.
Right, which was actually a trial
that confused a lot of people saying,
what is this trial even about? Right.
They they've already said
he's going to prison for a long time,
that he's trying to launch a new campaign
to try to turn Russians
against the war in Ukraine.
From everything
that we understand in here,
they're still incredible support
among regular Russians for the war.
And I know you and I have talked about
that.
There are groups, right,
that there's not that
that that's not true for.
And you've talked about that.
But overall, we still see it in surveys.
So what is he doing?
How is he trying to accomplish this now?
So what they're doing now
is they're going to ask volunteers
to call in
Foreign Service and to ask questions
about the war,
those who are still on the fence
and what's happening
and don't necessarily understand
or have questions
or even want their relatives
to talk to someone
to explain
what's happening with the war in Russia.
In Ukraine, this was started by Putin.
And
basically this is I think it's a it's
an amazing thing
to start
considering the fact
that my dad announced this
while he's in court being prosecuted
on his own case
and he decided to announce
to do something for the Russian people
for the better future of the country.
And I'm incredibly proud of him.
So your your
your father's father,
your grandfather, we heard him there.
Right.
He said Russia has no shame,
no conscience, no honor.
I know that it's been more than a year
since your dad has seen his own parents.
How would you describe
what Putin is doing,
what Russia is doing right now,
just on the personal level,
to your father, to your family,
I can talk about this for hours.
I
I'm just it's not even about my family.
It's about I'm
sad and disappointed and angry
that he's doing this
to people
who haven't done anything to him,
to normal Russian citizens, to ordinary
Ukrainian citizens.
He's killing people.
He's threatening people here.
He's asking people
to move out of different countries.
And I want him to stop
and I want his government to stop
what they're doing, surrender and
to stop this horrifying war.
All right.
Well, Dasha, I'm glad to see you again
one of these times.
I hope it will be under very different,
different circumstances.
But thank you so much for sharing this
and making
sure everyone knows
what's happening to your father.
Thank you for having me.